Art house: Solitary Joy’s Tong Yang-tze is a woman of characters

For thousands of years scholars have practiced Chinese calligraphy. These days, however, with the prevalence of computers and smart phones, few pick up a brush.

Still, prominent Taiwanese calligrapher Tong Yang-tze, who has written every day since she was a child, actively pushes the boundaries of Chinese calligraphy as art. Now in her early 70s, her work can be seen all over Taipei, from posters promoting dance troupe Cloud Gate Dance Theatre, to buildings, subway stations and book covers.

Tong's energy and artistic vision are captured in Wang Yen-ni's Solitary Joy, a documentary produced by the CNEX Foundation and presented by the Taiwanese Ministry of Culture.

The film opens with the Shanghai-born artist talking about studying oil painting at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. On a whim she took her calligraphy copybooks with her. She continued to practice calligraphy during her time there and then exhibited some of those pieces after returning to Taipei in 1973.

Praise for her style encouraged Tong to become bolder and create very large pieces that have to be viewed from a distance to appreciate not only the meaning but also the energy and artistry in the brush strokes.

Several well-known curators, architects and designers are interviewed in the film, with the likes of former National Palace Museum director Shih Shou-chien and Hong Kong designer Freeman Lau Siu-hong talking about how they are in awe of Tong's energy and creativity and how she enjoys challenging herself.

Tong likes collaborating to present Chinese calligraphy in other formats and media in order to engage the public, in particular young people, in the art form. At one point, architect Ray Chen describes an exhibition of her works that he curated, that encouraged attendees to take up a brush and write Chinese characters from a giant pool of ink - about 2.5 tonnes of it - in the middle of the room.